Will this increase or decrease the likelihood of terrorist actions in America, Europe and the rest of the world?

If you were a member of a family murdered in this conflict, would you be seeking revenge?

Should Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, be tried for war crimes if or when this conflict comes to an end?

What will the price of oil be in 4 weeks time?

Hi JKD

I do remember postings from you, and they were always thoughtful and interesting. I mainly use ADVFN now, which has some very well informed posters.

I may be wrong but I have a funny feeling by your style of writing that we hold some of the same stocks and contribute to the same threads over there.

Regards spitfire43..........

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11141774

More than 150 Israeli academics say they will no longer lecture or work in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

In a letter, they said they supported the recent decision by a group of actors and others not to take part in cultural activity there.

The academics said that acceptance of the settlements caused "critical" damage to Israel's chances of achieving peace with the Palestinians.

The actors were criticised for refusing to perform at a new cultural centre.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the last thing Israel needed as it resumed direct peace talks was a boycott from within.

In a letter published on Sunday, the academics said they would no longer take part in any kind of cultural activity, or lecture in any kind of academic setting, in settlements built on land occupied following the Middle East war - demarcated by what is commonly known as the "Green Line".

They explained that they wanted to show support and solidarity for the 53 actors, writers and directors who last week said they would not take part in performances at the new cultural centre built in Ariel.

"We'd like to remind the Israeli public that, like all settlements, Ariel is also in occupied territory," the academics said.

"If a future peace agreement with the Palestinian authorities puts Ariel within Israel's borders, then it will be treated like any other Israeli town."

"Legitimatisation and acceptance of the settler enterprise cause critical damage to Israel's chances of achieving a peace accord with its Palestinian neighbours."

Close to 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

A separate letter, signed by a number of well-known Israeli authors and artists, is expected to be published in the coming days.

The killings of 4 Israelis by the "armed wing" of Hamas is appalling.

If it is as reported it was murder and I hope those who were responsible are apprehended.

Unfortunately, it could have been expected by the exclusion of Hamas from the proposed "peace" negotiation.

It has not advanced the Palestinians' case and besides being murder is an act of stupidity.

s43
with apologies to others for being off topic, i dont go over there so it isnt me.
good luck to you.
back to topic.
regards to all
jkd

FFS, Hamas refuse to talk to Israel and demand its destruction (just like haybrain et al) and Hamas has condemned Abbas as a traitor for talking to Israel.
No doubt haybrain et al are thrilled at four people being deliberately murdered, including a pregnant woman - he must be orgasmic at the thought.

jkd
My apologies, you just had a similar writing style to someone else.
Apologies for going off this riveting topic!

I will let the pointless arguments here re-commence.

imho

Bye

Regards sf43

Good post from you Fred on the Hamas murders. Continue with such balance and you may go up on my estimation :) Wonder if we will get something similar from Haystack.

fred is pretending to be "balanced" as every other post he has made is anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian and pro-terrorist (no, not all Palestinians are terrorists, the majority are decent people who rightly want a state of their own).
He is merely dissembling because he thinks that will add weight to his anti-Israel (and anti-Semitic) ramblings, as in, "ooo, look at me, I'm objective, unlike my mate haybrain so you can believe in what I say".
Don't be so easily fooled - though being deceived happens to all of us.....I once thought Blair was a decent man and believed his lies about WMD !

I did say "may go up" if he continued.....

Fair enough :)
Whereas haybrain asks "why should I be objective", fred doesn't have anything but the remotest and most transient relationship with objectivity.
I suppose even the worst people have some redeeming feature, however insignificant. Hitler was supposed to be fond of dogs, for example........

The killings are to be deplored. The reporting of the events are very muddled. Hamas claims that one of the four people in the car was a settler responsible for terrorist activities against Palestinians.

A number of Palestinans have been shot at and killed by armed settlers. Of course no one reports on the fishermen shot at and killed every few days by Israeli gun boats of the coast of Gaza or the farmers shot at by Israeli troops from within Israel along the border as Israel says no one can farm with a mile of the Gaza/Israel border. Armed settlers enter Palestinian villages almost daily and destroy their crops and olive trees ransack their houses and fire automatic weapons at them.

Jewish settler leaders have urged their followers to terrorize and murder Arab civilians in response to the Tuesday night attack near Hebron.

Earlier this week, Ovadia Yosef, the religious mentor of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which represents Jews from the Middle East , called for the "annihilation of all Palestinians."

"I pray to God to annihilate them with a plague," said elderly rabbis. His virulent remarks received little condemnation in the Israeli Jewish society.


As usual four Israelis are killed and there is a public outcry. Palestinians are killed almost daily by Israeli settlers and by Israeli Occupation Forces and there is little said. This is hardly balanced reporting, bearing in mind that Israel is the occupying force. They even call their soldiers the IOF (Israel Occupying Force). They are also building hundreds of settlements illegally in the West Bank.

What would happen in any other country if an occupying force started to build settlements in the occupied area? In the last war, Germany occupied France and they were subject to sabotage attacks and killings. What would have happened if Germany had imported 500,000 people and built settlements of Germans in France? That is exactly what Israel is doing. There are now 500,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements in the West Bank,

ITLOTB
"Hamas refuse to talk to Israel and demand its destruction "

No, incorrect. Hamas has not refused to talk to Israel. They are happy to talk to Israel. They want settlement building to stop, they want the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the West Bank and Gaza and they want the Palestinians to be officially recognised. These are the conditions before talks. Hamas are happy to have Israel exist, but they want the land to be shared between Jews and Arabs.

You are confusing Hamas with Hezbollah. Hexbollah want the total destruction of Israel. This is not what Hamas want.

Such an expert LOL !

For once I'll use a copy and paste from Hamas's (Islamic Resistance Movement)Charter:

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

You misunderstand what is being said. They want the state of Israel destroyed, not the people. They want the whole of Israel to be Palestine again and then the people who live there can share it (Jews and Muslims). Hamas is not anti-Jewish. There are plenty of Jewish people who live in mulsim countries in the ME. There were Jews living in Gaza until Israel forcibly removed them to Israel. They somehow thought it was what the Palestinians wanted and might be a path to peace. There are lots of Jewish groups in europe and in Israel who support Hamas. It is Zionism and not the Jews that Hamas hates.

"Hamas has not refused to talk to Israel. They are happy to talk to Israel.", says haybrain.

" Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors." says Hamas

Reconcile your words with Hamas's.
Go on, try.....after all, anything is possible once sense and objectivity are discarded.

Your gullibility knows no bounds.
What do you think would happen if Hamas was able to destroy Israel?
Do you really think the Jews and Israeli Muslims there would survive?
Destroy Israel but not its peoples?
Time you got a one way ticket back to the planet you came from.......or the mental institution.

Others can see why a "debate" is impossible with your kind; self-confessed rejecters of objectivity who only see what they wish to see and reject all else.

I suspect you and your kind are best left to rage and rant with silence from all others - that should be familiar to you; it's like your padded cell.

Bye bye

Don't get confused by the invective of conflict. Plenty of Israeli government members also call for the destruction of the Palestinians. This article from Reuters this year is worth reading as it gives a more realistic view if what Hamas think. Meshaal is the real leader of Hamas and the only hope of a political solution. He has made similar comments over the last five years or so.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64T2AM20100530

Reuters May 2010

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has stated explicitly that the Palestinian Islamist group will end its armed struggle against Israel if the Jewish state withdraws from Palestinian land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.

Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, has long maintained that it will enter into a long-term truce if Israel pulls out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and agrees to a right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees.

Speaking on the Charlie Rose program on U.S. PBS television, Meshaal directly addressed the issue of armed resistance, which is the basis of its ideology as a national liberation movement.

"Israel started (the conflict) by the occupation so the resistance is a reaction. The action is the occupation, and the reaction from the Palestinians is that it ends," Meshaal said, in an interview taped on Thursday, according to a transcript released by PBS.

"So when the occupation comes to an end, the resistance will end, as simple as that. If Israel would go to the 1967 borders ... that will be the end of the Palestinian resistance."

Meshaal said if a "Palestinian state with real sovereignty" were established under the conditions he set out, then the nature of any subsequent ties with Israel would be decided democratically by the Palestinians.

Hamas has ruled Gaza since it won a brief civil war in 2007 against supporters of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's more secular Fatah faction, creating a schism that has undermined the Palestinian cause.

The movement had said it could live peacefully alongside Israel if a two-state solution was reached in which all occupied Palestinian land was returned, even though its 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state in all of pre-1948 British-mandate Palestine.

I condemned "unnecessary" murder or killing by any group or individual person.

The perpetrators of these murder and similar crimes are both Arabs and Israelis.

More often, than otherwise, the sufferers of the atrocities are innocent of anything crime other than existing.

In the ME, the it seems the main and continuing abuse, has been by the Israelis (administration) of the Arabs, by their inability to accept the humanitarian rights of all the people within and without the Israeli borders.

The arrogance of the Israeli administration is bewildering, as is the stupidity of some of the utterances by some Arab bodies.

The Israeli government does not have the support of large sections of their population. It only exists because it is propped up by the extreme right wing religious parties. The current talks will fail for many reasons. One reason is that the Palestinians want a halt on settlement building and Israel won't give that undertaking as the right wing part of the government has just recently told Netenyahu that they will bring down the government if new settlement is stopped.

Accepted.